I’m confused about the HHR portion of the new changes.
Housing documentation is required even under the new 2024 changes. My father’s documents from the 80s have an old address that doesn’t even exist anymore. What do I do in this case after I get my residency permit from NIH?
Documents proving the correct registered address in Taiwan : refers to the household register of the registered address, national identity card, house ownership certificate, recent housing tax bill or the original or photocopy of the lease contract (choose one of the five). However, if the registered address is the same as the household registration address of his parents and the household register (or national identity card) has been attached, he is exempted from attaching it. - https://www.roc-taiwan.org/cayvr/post/15785.html (this is from TECO Toronto, my local TECO California and TECRO itself have not updated their sites)
Required documentation: Settlement certificate and seal (or signature) issued by the Immigration Department of the Ministry of Interior, Housing documentation. - 初設戶籍登記
Yes, my understanding is that you have to have an address in Taiwan, and documents proving your residence at that address, in order to establish residency, in order to get your ID card. One way is to ask relatives (or even friends?) living in Taiwan to let you register at their address.
If that option isn’t available to you, then I think you would need to rent an apartment and confirm with the landlord that he will allow you to register your household registration there. By law, they must allow you, but in practice they may refuse or choose to charge you higher rent. Then, once you have the rental contract, you should be able to use that as evidence to prove your registered address in Taiwan. There was some discussion elsewhere about different forms of rental contract documents, and some questions whether or not the simplified (and supposedly non-legally-binding?) rental contract form that most landlords use is sufficient for this purpose or not. I think the conclusion of the discussion was that if the proof-of-residency documents are not sufficient or cannot be provided (e.g. if the landlord refuses), then someone (from the HHR office, or from the NIA?) will need to come to your address and confirm you are living there, and that can in-person confirmation can then serve as proof of Taiwan residency.
An open question for me is whether a hotel or temporary lodging can serve as the your proof-of-residency address for getting HHR. This might be the case if someone wants to obtain their HHR and ID card (shenfenzheng) immediately under the new law, but does not plan to live permanently in Taiwan right now. In this case, I wonder whether a temporary address in Taiwan could be used to obtain HHR and the ID card under the new law. An earlier discussion found some Taiwanese government page saying that if someone lacks a permanent address and stays in a hotel for an extended period of time, then that person should/must register the actual residence address (the hotel) as the HHR address. This implies that for longer-term hotel stays, it seems indeed possible to use a hotel address for HHR. Whether or a short-term hotel stay would also be allowed in this case, for the very first HHR registration by an NWOHR of the first residence address, is the open question for me. Presumably permission of the hotel owner and some documents from the hotel would be required.
I don’t know the details, since I haven’t gone through the process myself, but the general gist from what I’ve seen so far is that, even under the new law, you somehow have to obtain proof-of-residency documents to establish HHR.
On a different topic, I find it odd that the requirements listed in the page you linked (https://www.roc-taiwan.org/cayvr/post/15785.html) also require providing the passport of the non-ROC-parent as part of the application process. Why is that needed? The legal justification for being able to establish HHR is that ONE parent be an ROC citizen (national with HHR), so why is the passport of the other non-ROC parent needed?
If you look at the actual application form (https://www.immigration.gov.tw/media/81852/中華民國臺灣地區入境居留定居申請書-11181版.pdf), it seems that you need to provide only the number of the ID card (shenfenzheng) of one ROC parent, which I think is the “依親對象” (target of dependency) entry in the form, meaning the ROC parent that enables you to apply for HHR. For this person, you must provide the 身分證統一編號 (shenfenzheng number), proving that this person was an ROC national with HHR.
Then for other relatives, there is a table underneath that entry where you can enter information about your other relatives (親屬狀況) including parents (雙親), but providing the ID card number is not mandatory for these relatives if the ID card does not exist (無則免填), and there is no stated requirement on the form to provide foreign passport numbers of any non-ROC parent.
Under the old TARC process, those applying under AF384 (parent deceased) wouldn’t have housing for when they were ready to apply for their own residence permit, correct?
In the link I provided, they even specifically use an example of someone just going back to Taiwan to complete this process. If they knew no one in Taiwan and their parent’s HHR was moved out, how would this scenario be possible?:
If you return to Taiwan to apply for a residence permit after preparing all the documents, it is recommended that you reserve sufficient time to stay in Taiwan based on the number of working days for each unit to apply for the application (the number of days will be extra if supplementary documents are required) to successfully complete the settlement and registration process.
I always thought the simplified rental contract is not worth the paper it’s on according to government workers, they want you to go to court and do it “proper”.
That’s a very good question to which I also want to know the answer.
Based on my current knowledge, if you have no one in Taiwan whose address you can use for your HHR, then you would need to first enter Taiwan as a tourist (using either your foreign passport or your NWOHR passport – not sure if there are any advantages/disadvantages to either one) and immediately sign a rental contract with a landlord who agrees to allow you to register your HHR at that address. Then, having signed the rental contract, you can use that to proceed with submitting your application and the required documents, including the rental contract.
A more convenient option would be some kind of a reputable temporary lodging like a hotel or short-term-rental that allows you to register HHR at that address. But that’s the open question I mentioned earlier – (1) do hotels/short-term rentals allow HHR registration? (2) does the HHR office accept a hotel/short-term rental address?
This page says that, at least for Kaohsiung, if proper documents to prove the residence address cannot be provided, then the HHR office can perform some kind of manual “verification” by police or HHR personnel that you live there – most likely, a visit to your address and asking around your neighbors – and that is then sufficient.
What a strange system… the verification process, to prove that you actually live there, then results in your not being able to live there anymore.
I think the practical way to go is to get permission from the landlord in advance that you can register HHR there. Then try to submit the simplified rental contract to the HHR office. You might get lucky and it might be accepted (BUT, also see referenced post where this was rejected and other options are presented). If not, then the HHR/police may come around to visit your apartment, but since you already told the landlord you were going to register HHR there, it should hopefully not cause eviction.
This is from asking the HHR office. He said to get the landlord’s permission. But we know 9 times out of 10 this will result in either a flat out refusal or raised rent.
If they do the home visit and all that, the landlord will evict you if you didn’t ask him beforehand. I think the only way to do this is to “force their hands”, basically if the government just does a home visit and sends a notice saying “register your current address as HHR or else”, then that might work.
There’s no law saying they can’t just refuse to renew the contract or jack up the rent so much as to force you out. Believe me, they got the upper hand here.